Conventionally, reactions for organic syntheses are mainly carried out in batch using instruments made of glass or a resin. In recent years, however, the so called microreactor system is now being more and more practically used wherein the reactions are carried out in the microspace in the microchannels formed by a new microprocessing technology, which system is based on the flow reaction technique. This was realized not only by the development of microprocessing technology but also by the fact that accurate analysis of a sample in a microamount has been able to be attained by the advancement of analytical techniques in recent years. Since an extremely large specific area can be attained in the microflow in microspace, temperature control can be attained extremely effectively. In addition, since the contact area between reactants is drastically increased in the microspace, the reaction efficiency is also promoted. Since heat exchange such as cooling and heating can be advantageously attained, and the amount of the sample and reagents can be largely reduced, costs and energy can be saved and environmental load can be reduced.
At present, as the microchannel devices providing the reaction sites in microreactor systems, microchannel chips made of glass, quartz, silicon, PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane), plastics, metal or the like are used, and among these, microchannel chips made of glass are now mainly used.
However, microprocessing of glass is extremely costly. In addition, glass has poor resistance to alkaline solutions and hydrofluoric acid, and their chemical resistance is not necessarily satisfactory. Patent Literature 1 discloses a hollow device using a substrate made of a material other than glass. However, in this literature, a hollow channel is formed by curing a resin incorporating a metal yarn and thereafter withdrawing the metal yarn. By such a method, it is impossible to form a channel having a complicated shape.
[Patent Literature 1] JP 2003-311697 A